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Resource Library

This page provides an archive of resources highlighting the costs of the war on drugs over the past 50 years.

The archive can be searched by keyword, or filtered according to cost/sub-cost and region/country. To filter the searches use the drop-down menus and sub menus below.

You can also order search items by date or alphabetically.

As well as written reports and analysis you can find images, video and audio media (see icons next to resource items in the search output list below). Images can also be viewed from the galleries on the individual cost pages.

This collection will be expanded and updated over the coming year with support of project partners. The Count the Costs website is an evolving resource that will host examples of the devastating costs of the war on drugs. It is a work in progress which will develop over a number of years. At this stage it can be viewed as partially filled library shelves that you can help to fill with appropriate material (see here for more information).

Resource type

Associated cost

Region/Country

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The third annual overview on the status of the death penalty for drug offences worldwide documents the 33 countries and territories that retain death penalty for drug offences, including 13 in which the sentence is mandatory.

Here the former Mexican president (outgoing at the time of article), Felipe Calderon, argues that the drug trade is impossible to end. He claims that the U.S. has a responsibility to the moral issue of the power and money that their drug consumption gives criminals in Mexico and focuses on this as the biggest part of the Mexican War on Drugs.

The product of six years' work, this report from the UK Drug Policy Commission proposes a rethink of how policy should respond to drug problems and ultimately calls for the decriminalisation of drug possession/use.

Amnesty International reports that cases of torture and ill-treatment have risen sharply in Mexico during President Calderon's militarised campaign against the country's drug cartels. The organisation urges Calderon's successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, to honour his commitment to end such abuses.